The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1913. PLANTING THE STREETS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 48, 25 February 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1913. PLANTING THE STREETS.

It is a matter of history that an attempt was once made to adorn the streets of Stratford with avenues of shady trees. Money was -forthcoming, and the trees were planted. . Stratford lias grown since then, but the trees have' not. Only one or two stunted stragglers stretch out a few green leaves to remind citizens of the glories that might have been, and the memories these stragglers arouse are sad ones. Someone had blundered. Oriental planes, a species of tree that will flourish in Wanganui hut die in Stratford, were planted, and those who paid for the work might just as well have planted their good money in the holes they dug. The cash at least would have provided exciting times for the Borough workmen when the streets needed cutting up for water extensions or drainage connections. Last evening, when the new-ly-formed Stratford Beautifying Society was drawing its meeting to a. close, the President (Mr W. P. Kirkwood) remarked that he had ii> i.Vnd a scheme for improving the appearance of the streets of the Borough, by planting sycamores on Broadway South from Opunake Road to Swansea Road, on the west side, and Broadway North from Pembroke Road to Flint Road, also on the west side. Sycamores, Mr Kirkwood told the meeting, not only grow, hut they stood transplanting, and he was optimistic enough to affirm that ho could convince the Council that this scheme would not! end as the other had done. The matter will he brought before the Borough Council by His Worship, and a motion was passed by the Society favoring the scheme, and assuring the Council of co-operation in the work. •Judicious' tree-planting would certainly be a good thing, but it must be undertaken wifii some fear and trembling, having in mind the lessons of the past. NAPOLEON AND THE DOCTORS. English papers and correspondents are writing much about Professor Arthur Keith's now discoveries and theories about the last illness of Napoleon, which were laid by him before the Hunterian Society, and naturally aroused great interest. The meeting was the beginning of a controversy which will undoubtedly have a

groat, effect on Napoleonic literature. Lord Rosebery, who in his “Last Phase” adopts the cancer theory entirely, was invited to be present- but he could not come, and (as one correspondent put it) “we had to do without the sporting pleasure of a. duel between the great rhetorician am [ the distinguished Conservator of the College of Surgeons’ .Museum.” The central point of interest in the old brownish-coloured library at “Bart’s” was the two little glass jars containing what looked like scraps of dusky skin. Dr. Keith, with o'rcat ingenuity and resource, devel-

oped his argument that these specimens from the museum are in truth fragments of the Emperor’s body, and/ further, that they show that Napoleon’s personal doctors were right after all in saying that he suffered from a- tropical disease caused by his imprisonment at St. Helena. Tims after a century these much-ma-ligned doctors, who wore disgracedJ for their diagnosis by the English i Government of the day, have foundj an able defender. Dr. Keith lias j revived the legend of St. Helena in a most unexpected fashion. Dr. Arnould Chaplin, one of the supporters of the orthodox view, pointed shrewdly to the weak place in the chain—namely, the absence of any direct evidence either that the specimens were taken from the body or conveyed from St Helena to England.